Ken-Matt Martin has come home. Martin, a Little Rock native who got his start in theater running a spotlight at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre when he was a student at Parkview High, has since expanded into producing and directing shows throughout the country.
He took over as the Rep’s interim artistic director a year ago as part of a reorganization of its upper management that split the theater’s leadership into two parts. Then-executive artistic director Will Trice, a Little Rock native and Tony-winning Broadway producer whom the theater hired in 2019, assumed the title of executive director, focusing on administration, finance and marketing.
Martin’s job has been to produce the theater’s 2024 summer mainstage season and other theatrical projects while the Rep opens a formal search for a permanent artistic chief.
He and Trice are in, well, frequent communication.
“We talk constantly, even when I’m away directing things, on the phone late at night, we’re texting or emailing back-and-forth,” Martin says. “Sometimes when I don’t answer his emails he’s nagging me via text.
“I adore him. I love him so much, and I feel really really fortunate to get to have him as a partner in leadership and to get to this incredible organization. If it were not for this place, neither of us would’ve been able to do all the other things we’ve done with our lives and careers. So it’s really rewarding and special.
“I mean, people always forget, so I love reminding them, that the man has three Tony Awards, for God’s sake — I mean he’s one of the most prolific, brilliant producers that we’ve had in American theater; he just so happens, like me, to be from Little Rock.”
“We drive each other crazy, which is probably supposed to be the case,” Trice says. “It’s a nice yin and yang — he’s more comfortable in the rehearsal room, I’m more comfortable in a spreadsheet.”
Martin attended Martin Luther King Elementary School, to which he has recently returned to mentor students in a project the Rep calls its “Downtown Playmakers Program.”
“There’s a lot of these moments right now in my life, but a full-circle moment that is one of the first new programs that we have been able to launch during my year as interim is our Playmakers Program,” he says. “We are working with third-grade students at King right now. They are writing plays that we will be presenting with actual adult actors and with real tech and everything else.”
The results will show up onstage, 7 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Saturday, in the Rep’s second-mezzanine black box theater. Admission is free.
Martin has worked on similar projects elsewhere. “Actually, in a lot of places I’ve actually participated in them. And theaters that I’ve worked for in Baltimore, as well as in Rhode Island, specifically have programs exactly like this. But it’s new for us here, where you take professionals and you take the plays written by actual elementary school students, but you treat them as if you’re going to put it on like a professional play.”
SHAKEN TO THE CORE
Martin was attending Horace Mann (when he started out there it was a junior high, and while he was there it converted to a middle school) when he got his first taste of theater.
“I saw ‘The Piano Lesson’ here [at the Rep],” he recalls. “I was on a school field trip. I saw Lawrence Hamilton play Wining Boy in that [January 2003] production, amongst the other beautiful actors, and it just shook me to my core and woke me up.
“I was so fortunate I got to direct a production of ‘Piano Lesson’ this past year in Des Moines, [Iowa] so that was [also] a beautiful full-circle moment for me to get to return to that particular play. But that’s how I got the theater bug.
“The following summer, there was a contest on Nickelodeon where they were looking for a new cast member for the television show ‘All That’ and I begged my mother to see if I could audition — and this is at a time, you know, before cellphones, before the internet; I was, like, looking up the information on the library computer or whatever because we didn’t have even a family computer.
“I convinced my mother, and she and I and her best friend drove to Atlanta overnight. We couldn’t afford a hotel room, so we did a round-trip; I changed in the McDonald’s parking lot. And I went in and auditioned … because I knew after seeing that play that I was like, ‘I don’t really know what that is, but I think I maybe want to be an actor or something.’
“I got to be a semifinalist; I didn’t actually win the contest and win the role, but I was on national TV at 12 — because they showed the auditions of the semifinalist [rounds], so I was on two episodes of the competition.
“I didn’t go forward, but I got me an agent out of it, and so my entire middle-school years and all through high school — and God bless my parents because they were always so supportive whenever they could do it — I would get auditions and we’d drive to Atlanta. In modern times, I’d be probably making a lot of self tapes, you know, but this is before [cellphones], so we had a friend who had a camcorder and he knew how to convert tapes to DVDs, and then we would mail the DVDs off to the casting directors.”
Meanwhile, another Little Rock performer, James Charles Lewis III, better known by his professional trade name Lil’ JJ, was tearing things up in the entertainment world — in fact, he’s the one who ended up in the cast of “All That,” and followed that up with a range of television and film roles.
“A different Little Rock star — I don’t remember his, like, real adult name now, but Lil’ JJ, he was a little bit younger than me, right, so … I had this moment where it looked like maybe I was about to … get my foot in the door and do something on TV, and then it just didn’t happen. And then he … took off like a rocket.
“So my middle-school years kind of [passed] with me feeling like I missed out — I didn’t get to … do the thing I wanted to do. So then I turned to theater because I kind of gave up on TV. And that’s when I really became the [theater] nerd at Parkview.” Shows that he recalls doing while he was there: “I think the ones that stick out — we did ‘Little Shop of Horrors’; we did ‘Once on This Island’; we did ‘Sweeney Todd.’”
‘UNIQUE VANTAGE POINT’
Martin attended Drake University in Des Moines and went on to earn a master of fine arts degree in directing from Brown University in Providence, R.I. Both towns became theatrical homes for Martin — in Des Moines, he co-founded the Pyramid Theatre Company; in Providence, he has worked for several years with Trinity Repertory Company.
“I’m currently on the payroll for 19 different theaters around the country” as director, producer and consultant, he says. “And so because I’m inside of multiple theaters at once, I have this unique vantage point that I sometimes call the burden of perspective of light.
“I see the whole field for what it is right now, and every single [theater], while there’s always nuance and differences between what the challenges are, the challenges are all quite similar, frankly.
“Every institution is having to think about, ‘How do you create the space and the opportunity to still do high-quality work, and present things in an affordable fashion, and yet at the same time, have to deal with the real economic realities of this moment?’ That every institution is facing inflation, that inflation is real, that the cost of doing anything is higher than it was many years ago in every industry in every way, and our industry is not immune to that. And so we have to think creatively about how do we best maximize our resources.”
And that, Martin says, was a primary factor in Arkansas Rep changing its production model from staging a half-dozen shows during a September-June season to a concentrated summer season, shoehorning five productions into a June-September window.
“A big part of that was keeping a full-time, year-round staff, and presenting shows back-to-back-to-back in the way that most theaters do,” he explains. “It’s just not economical — it just doesn’t make a lot of sense anymore.
“Every single [organization] is facing different challenges, to be clear, and yet are faced with the same essential question, which is that this financial model for the nonprofit theater does not work; it’s not sustainable any longer.
“How do you rethink this financial [model], and yet [remain] creative? Here [at the Rep], like Baltimore, like Trinity Rep — all three are doing work right now to bring community connections closer together. These theaters were founded [to provide a] home for local artists and space to be able to create opportunities for the artists that are living here. And yet, over time as these institutions grew, and as they saw success other ways, [each] started to become a place where you bring in a bunch of people from out of town.
“At Pyramid, the theater that I founded in Des Moines, we had a commitment to new work that was based into the mission, a commitment to classics as well, and making sure that we always had a combination and a mix of bringing professionals and getting them on stage with our locals and not acting as if those are two different things.”
Tiffany Johnson, Pyramid’s co-founder, now community impact specialist at Bravo Greater Des Moines, says, “It has been over a decade since I first crossed paths with Ken-Matt Martin, and from the very first day, I knew he was someone extraordinary. His innate sense of ‘knowing’ — a profound understanding of both the artistic and operational aspects of theater, has made him an unparalleled mentor and collaborator.”
MANIC SCHEDULE
Martin pops in and out of Little Rock while juggling a schedule so intense that he recommends, in response to incoming emails, redirecting queries to his two assistants.
In December he directed the Rep’s Motown-centered Christmas show. In February, he and Tamra Patterson Calamese, the Rep’s director of community, learning and public programs, started putting together a Black History Month program for area schools, working on the Downtown Playmakers Program with the third-graders at MLK Elementary and auditioning teenagers and adults for the musical “Footloose,” one of the summer season offerings (onstage July 9-28). “And then also, because the work never stops, a lot of fundraising, a lot of meetings with various funders, board meetings, things of that sort.”
From here he jetted off to start rehearsals at Washington, D.C.’s Mosaic Theater on a new play called “Nancy,” about Nancy Reagan “that I have been attached to for many, many years,” he explains. “Then I go straight from that to directing a production of ‘How I Learned What I Learned,’ that August Wilson autobiography show starring Harry Lennox, which is very exciting for me because he’s one of the greatest actors of all time, and I’m doing that in Chicago in April.”
Martin will be at the helm of at least two Rep productions this summer: the season opener, “Pride & Prejudice,” a new adaptation by Kate Hamill of the Jane Austen classic, onstage June 18-30, and, if he hasn’t found somebody else to take it off his hands, a concert version of the musical “Hello, Dolly!” that the Rep is doing in collaboration with the Arkansas Symphony, Aug. 22-24.
“[This is] really special to me because the last time ‘Dolly’ was produced here, I was [a spotlight] operator, so I watched every single performance of that show, which is where I fell in love with [composer] Jerry Herman and his music, and all of his scores. I just love that show — I just remember [being] up in that catwalk and working my little fun spot and hearing that big, beautiful, sweeping chorus every night, it’s just — there’s nothing quite like it.”
‘FULL-CIRCLE MOMENT’
Bob Hupp, artistic director at Syracuse Stage and former producing artistic director at the Rep, also uses the term “full-circle moment” to describe Martin’s current role.
“I remember, many years ago, a conversation I had with him in my office,” he recalls. “Our talk came around to his dreams for the future and he said he wanted to be the artistic director of Arkansas Rep. And now he is!
“Ken-Matt enjoys a well deserved national reputation for his insightful artistry and his visionary institutional leadership. From Des Moines to Providence, from Chicago to Baltimore, and now in Little Rock, [he] makes a difference wherever he goes. The Rep really is Ken-Matt’s artistic home, and I think that’s a good thing for the arts in Arkansas.”
Trice says he met Martin soon after Trice took over at the Rep, five years ago. “We immediately hit it off,” he recalls. “He was just coming into his own as a nonprofit producer.”
Martin’s mother, Laura Martin, was on the Rep board at the time and sort of brought them together.
“We met up in New York. I hadn’t moved back here yet, and we started talking regularly,” he says. Martin was instrumental in recommending actors and directors, including the directors of the Rep’s 2022-23 season productions of “Into the Woods” and “Clyde’s,” both of which turned out to be successful.
So when the Rep, which since its founding by the late Cliff Baker in the mid-’70s had always had a single administrator handling executive and artistic decisions, started looking at dividing those responsibilities, Martin was almost a “gimme.”
“It was like the universe was screaming for it to happen,” Trice says. “He’s a product of Little Rock public schools, a product of the Rep, he’s had a national theater career. And he has a vested interest in that his hometown maintains this institution.”
So far, nothing has been done about finding a permanent artistic director, Trice says. “We haven’t started that process yet,” he notes. Shifting to a summer season, the job now “doesn’t require being in Little Rock 365 days a year.” And, he says, Martin was in the forefront of “making sure we had a proper, transparent search process. And he actually drove that desire.”
Martin cites his relationship with Trice as particularly fortunate.
“It really does feel like a marriage when you have a co-leadership model in that way, and so what’s beautiful about that, it’s like it’s something that’s old hat to me, as someone who’s had to navigate it many, many times with many different co-leaders. But it’s so rewarding to get to do it at home with someone like Will.
“When you talk about what’s happening with the Rep, it’s expansion — it’s actually growth: You know to go from the kind of single-leader model that had been here for years to the kind of two-CEO model that’s common.
“I can never sing Will’s praises enough for his brilliance and his leadership, to be able to kind of think expansively about how we can rethink what we do here and create new and different opportunities and new programs. And Will is also still making sure that high-quality work is at the center of what we do.”
SELF PORTRAIT
Ken-Matt Martin
PLACE OF BIRTH: Oct. 27, Little Rock
FAVORITE COLORS: Crimson and cream. They're the colors of my for-charity camp fraternity, Kappa Alpha Psi, a historically black fraternity, and my favorite color as a kid always was red anyway.
MENU FOR MY LAST MEAL: Oh my goodness, what a question! I don't know -- seafood. Lobster something ... I love potatoes, but I don't eat them as much -- all that starch -- but, like, any kind of potato.
FAVORITE SHOW I EVER SAW AT THE REP: That's a hard question. "Dreamgirls"? Oh my God, that was incredible. It was so good. It was the first musical ever that I saw, like, live in person. I'd seen things elsewhere, but, like, on video and stuff. And I remember, I saw it on closing night. The show was so freaking good. My father took me; the entire audience was on their feet before the end of the number except me and my dad, because I was like paralyzed ... I literally could not move, and my dad was ... kind of following my lead.
FAVORITE SHOW YOU'VE EVER DIRECTED: "The Piano Lesson." It's a special show. I got to direct it in Des Moines [Iowa] last year and it was the highest grossing show in Pyramid's history. If I could do it again, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
GUESTS AT MY FANTASY DINNER PARTY: James Baldwin. Toni Morrison. Can you imagine Toni Morrison and James Baldwin together? Only because she passed recently and I got to ... meet her once in passing and I just wish it could be Chita Rivera. You know what -- I've also had a chance to meet her because I worked on 'Warpaint' at the Goodman [in Chicago] ... Patti LuPone. And God rest his soul, because I really looked up to him -- I never got a chance to meet him and I regret this, but Hal Prince; like me, he's been both a director and producer. Yeah. And [playwright] Lorraine Hansberry.
IF I'VE LEARNED ONE THING IN LIFE, IT'S: If you can find a way to extend patience and grace to every single human that you meet you might just be lucky enough that people extend it back to you. And I truly believe that when we can find grace and be patient with one another, because life is hard and we're all just figuring it out, we can be better community members, better family members, better friends.
THE CELEBRITY I MOST RESEMBLE: This is easy because I get it all the time: [actor-comedian] Kevin Hart. I don't know if that's true as much anymore, but when I was in my 20s and a little bit thinner and skinnier, I was an admission counselor for Drake University and so I used to work college fairs all over the country, and it was during the period of time when he was first kind of rising, you know, like 2011-14. And young people used to come and try to sneak pictures of me: 'What's up Kevin Hart?'"
ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP: Determined
‘Every institution is having to think about, ‘How do you create the space and the opportunity to still do high-quality work, and present things in an affordable fashion, and yet at the same time, have to deal with the real economic realities of this moment?’ That every institution is facing inflation, that inflation is real, that the cost of doing anything is higher than it was many years ago in every industry in every way, and our industry is not immune to that. And so we have to think creatively about how do we best maximize our resources.’ -Ken-Matt Martin (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Cary Jenkins)